We've all been there. Burned by bold promises and hype that turns into ash the second you touch it.
It's not a new story. It happens all the time. A new AAA game will be released and users will find out all the hype was vapour, as the game turns out to be a buggy mess. A new coin will be promoted, folks will buy in, and lose everything to a rug pull. A Kickstarter will promise a game/tool/gadget that would be perfect and three years later you give up on even hoping to get anything at all.
It's a song and dance that we all have experienced in one way or another.
Often, it's marked by a ton of bold promises by extremely passionate people that simply cannot be delivered.
We've seen it here, on chain, multiple times. We don't even have to look that far back to see flops that burned us - just look at PsyberX and that utter flop.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Buckle up, because this is probably going to be a long one. We're going to talk about InLeo; what they've designed already, what they promise, and why we should be critical of hype.
Now, before I get into this too far you should know a few things about me that will help you understand why I'm about to be pretty critical. I've done graphic design/UX (I sucked at it, because I hate working with customers, but experience is experience). I spent 8 years as a QA testing websites and apps. I am currently a professional developer on a mature project. While some of what I say is based on personal feelings, a lot of what I'm about to talk about is based on earned experience in a field I am actively employed in (or have previously worked in).
An Incomplete History
I'm not going to claim that this is going to be comprehensive, by any means. But, before we get to current promises, it's worth looking at what has come before.
Cub/PolyCub
First, let's just get the two obvious dumpster fires out of the way. Cub Finance and PolyCub were, without a doubt, unmitigated disasters. They were utter flops, and it takes zero amount of time and effort to see folks in the community who were burned by this hype.
LeoMobile
Remember LeoMobile? No? Well, it was a project that had some hype and now how's it doing? It doesn't exist. I honestly didn't follow this one too closely so I don't know if it was just abandoned or if they ran into issues, but either way, the end is the same.
LeoDex
This feels like an abandoned project, which is odd because of all the stuff that the team has made it has far and away the most revenue-generation potential. If only folks used it, but they don't. Stats (which are likely inaccurate since we're not getting them from Leo itself) suggest that comparatively few are.
Vs TribalDex:
I will note that as I was researching this for this post, Khal has very recently talked about exactly this point, and suggested that the team will be working on updates to LeoDex.
It is worth mentioning that, obviously, comparing TribalDex to LeoDex isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. TD gets its traffic from token swaps dedicated to our L2 assets. LeoDex is focused on external capture. These services do two different things, but the point is to provide a frame of reference on user numbers, because for the team to be able to fund anything off of the profits of the Dex, those numbers have got to go way up.
Which begs the question of... how? How does the team achieve that given the recent funding situation? I'm interested to see what future development happens, as I'm not sure how they'll pull in enough usage without additional chains signing on, and since that proposal is current DOA... well, I don't envy the choices that'll have to be made.
InLeo
The "Twitter killer". Only, it's not, is it? This is saying something given that ol' Musky is doing his very best to kill that app all by himself, having lost both substantial revenue and users. But, that aside, InLeo to its credit is (currently) mostly functional, and is probably the best microblog we have on Hive. Credit where credit is due.
Having said that, it's also fair to have criticisms because the rollout of InLeo was not smooth. It took quite a while to just have Threads reliably surfaced every time you went to the website. This is a bare minimum requirement for a functional product, and it took several months to stop throwing 404s or timeouts just loading the home page.
Now though, it is pretty solid. It's been a long while since I couldn't load the site and they've squashed a huge number of bugs and done some decent UI cleanup. They still have "don't post links as top-level posts", which I've ranted about before and it is something that irks me because it implies that they don't understand why Web2 did this and simply ported the functionality over because "it's what twitter does", without understanding the mechanical reasons it was in play on Twitter in the first place.
As I said at great length and plainly in the linked post: this is bad UX and it serves no purpose, it should not exist.
Now, finally, there's the whole "monthly users" thing. I'm not going to rehash that because folks are arguing it back and forth constantly. I will say though, that it's a bad look when your dashboard numbers don't line up with the marketing materials you're publishing.
We see MACr (monthly active creators) value for Dec 2024 to be 4,855 in the media graphic published in January 2025. But if you look at the live, public data that they publish on InLeo Stats, we get 3,198 MACr with no value for MACo (Monthly active consumers):
That's a discrepancy in their own data of 1,657 "Creator" branded users. Now I wouldn't care about this at all really except for the INFURIATING fact that they keep tying Proposal funding to promises to hit targets OR RETURN THE FUNDING. This year's Original Proposal as well as the prior year's 10k MAU's proposal both featured this caveat, and anyone with half a brain should see that as a red flag. They dropped such phrasing in the Revised (current) proposal, thank the gods... but I can't believe I have to say this:
Stop saying you're going to do something you clearly will not do.
Folks can, and will, argue the stats on users because when you do this as a company you have invited them to challenge you. YOU opened a door, were shocked anyone used it, and it has caused dozens of posts worth of drama because of it. Further complicating this, the link for the raw data that was provided as a means to fact-check Leo no longer works.
This is likely because they chose to host it via discord of all goddamn places. The original link:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/985615672883150948/1338236142394544168/rawdata5.zip?ex=67aa5907&is=67a90787&hm=cbcd1eb4a9afbf6c0e23d5e9cb5a6bc7117054243ad99e6a34fd33a8c76f1dd8&
In the nicest possible way I can say it, this is amateur. All of the last two paragraphs are utterly amateur mistakes. YOU RUN A WEBSITE WITH THE CAPACITY TO STORE WHATEVER YOU WANT.
WHY ARE YOU STORING DATA ON DISCORD?!
Why are you inviting problems by promising to return funds that you've likely already spent if you don't hit metrics (metrics that only you can supply). You know who does this? Startups looking for funding at any cost. It's a tactic designed to provide a level of assurance to folks who don't know it for the red flag it is. It's bad business, and it's not something any reasonable company would ever do.
Now, I'm sure that's a lesson the Leo team has hopefully learned and won't repeat, but all of these ham-fisted historical issues lead me to the next point.
The Current Promises
An Everything App! (Because those have traditionally been super successful and easy to build, right?)
From the linked post, I'm going to skip over all the 'stuff we did' and bring your attention to the 2025 roadmap:
Coming in 2025
- Twitter (X) Export protocol for a one-click button to export a Twitter account's historical content to the Hive blockchain and store them as Threads (key to onboarding Twitter users to a blockchain alternative, using Hive)
- LeoAI - a chatgpt+ style feature that will be deeply integrated into the INLEO Experience. A Copilot, a new way to Search the Hive blockchain. LeoAI is built from the ground up and trained on all Hive blockchain Data
- LeoAds Protocol - permissionless, direct B2B ad platform (think Facebook Ads but on Hive through INLEO)
- Encrypted on-chain chats at scale - Hive needs a scalable encryption chat layer with a clean UI for DMs and Chatrooms, we will deliver something that people want to use: just like we did with Threads, Shorts and many other features
- New Hive onboarding methods (similar to how we built Hive Lite Accounts through X & Google and most recently launched Keystore Hive Accounts)
- LeoAI APIs that other Hive apps can connect to and utilize for high quality data retreival from the Hive blockchain (imagine use cases like Search on Ecency getting an order of magnitude better using LeoAI's SLM + LLM Model)
- LeoMerchants API for Hive Apps - any Hive app can accept any cryptocurrency for payment. Payments are settled in HBD (brings outside capital into the Hive ecosystem)
- LeoMerchants API for brick-and-mortar shops - any shop anywhere in the world can accept any crypto for payment. Payments flow through the Hive ecosystem and settle in any cryptocurrency the merchant wants to receive
- LeoMerchants PoS system - a Point of Sale system allows merchants in the real world to accept payments. INLEO hasn't publicly announced this yet, but we're working with a PoS partner to build PoS devices and deliver them to brick-and-mortar businesses so they can accept Crypto as payments. All payments flow through the Hive ecosystem. Customers can pay in any crypto and merchants can accept any crypto
- ChainFlip Aggregation added to our Hive Aggregator on https://leodex.io (connecting Hive to the ChainFlip ecosystem + solana, etc.)
- Thorchain Aggregation added to our Hive Aggregator on https://leodex.io (connecting Hive to the largest cross-chain DEX ecosystem on the planet)
- Organization Accounts on INLEO - bringing Premium a whole new use case for orgs on Hive
- Enhanced Profiles on Hive - taking the basic framework of Hive profiles and expanding the potential of them. One Account to Rule Them All
- Threadcasts overhaul - Threadcasts have become a major use case for putting live events and chatting on the Hive blockchain. We plan to expand this in a huge way in 2025 and turn Threadcasts into a real "Twitch Chat Killer" alternative
- Go LIVE - livestream video feature on INLEO to accompany the new Threadcast features. HUGE announcement coming in Q2, 2025
- Solana Integration. SOL Wallets and payments using SOL and SOL-based assets
- LEO listings on CEXes and DEXes - we'll continue to bring LEO to more blockchains and for the first time ever, Centralized Exchanges. Listing LEO in these places increases the velocity of trading volume for the LEO Token which is valuable for increasing potential trading volume for HIVE on our Hive Aggregation Technology Rails
- and many many more! Join us for our Weekly AMAs to hear about the Roadmap as it evolves in real time and we roll features out to the https://inleo.io platform
Well, that's a hell of a roadmap to achieve in the next 10 months. How many of you have worked on dev teams before? How many of you have done sprint planning/roadmap planning? How many of you can look at this list and spot the points that a team could reasonably spend an entire quarter working on just to get right?
How many developers does the Leo team pay, exactly? Because this roadmap is a... let's call it very liberal assumption of how little time these will take to get right.
A responsible company could look at just one of these items, such as the LeoMerchants features, and reasonably expect to spend at least a month or two on just that item. Add in that you're working with a third party and it gets even more complicated. Are there any considerations for local compliance? Are there any considerations for auditing those transactions and making that data available for the end merchant?
Unless some of this is already well on the way to deliverable (and it looks like some of it is), it's a huge list of features. With some of it already effectively out the door, maybe this is achievable.
Conclusion
To wrap this all up, I'm very critical of some of the things the Leo team has done. I side-eye some of the hyped-up goals that they've yet to accomplish. I think they are a passionate group of people who believe strongly in what they're building. But they've also made missteps. Inviting a storm over the definition of Monthly Users being just the most recent example. Let's not forget the veiled suggestion that other chains pay their devs way more and it'd be a shame if Leo had to go there. There was a half-thought-out Thread about being a power user or selling your stake and leaving Leo.
They have built some great tools - HiveStats is possibly the best statistical tool ever, and I don't know what I'd do without it. LeoDex is dripping with potential. InLeo isn't perfect but it does function now even if there were growing pains, and it's a solid little microblogging site.
There have been projects that did not pan out, and that's to be expected, but what I am most critical of is that the team seems to constantly be trying to do everything all at once. Rapid expansion is a trap that will snap shut on you.
The path to success is paved with failure, so I won't tell you that Leo can't succeed. They could. But it is reasonable to be critical of anyone who promises you the moon. It is reasonable to hold to task the people who are asking you for a ton of funding. And don't think that because it's the DHF that it isn't YOU being asked, it is. The DHF isn't magic free money, and folks have indisputably been treating it as such.
When people stand to personally profit off of you, you should be critical of what they promise. You should remember their history, and you should weigh past performance against current and future promises.
People are not coins, and by and large they don't meaningfully change their personalities, which means past performance IS indicative of future performance.
Don't blindly follow hype.
It's obvious for many years that they are extracting money for promises and nothing more, and that's why we should stop funding them. They never delivered anything meaningful.
The Dash relationship, much as folks try to spin it as benefiting everyone, really only benefits Leo. Hive is dumped via LeoDex and converted to Dash since that's what those users wanted payouts in - and I have to assume that means they earn on each.
Very very few of the users hold any HIVE, but it's a great deal for them as they can now make even easier Dash.
Thank you for the more detailed insights.
Mmm, I don't know, but I thought the original proposal was to gain 10,000 MAUs, so over the course of the year I would have expected to see gradually increasing MAUs, rather than what looks like nothing happening until December and then by a lucky break, the DASH partnership (regardless of the pros and cons of that partnership) appears to save the day. So really nothing.
I agree about the complexity and that is compounded when simple things are not addressed like leo.voter not paying out five days out of seven to delegators, or LeoDex seizing up and holding your tokens for months. I read the other day that there are 2,000 support waiting attention including one with 29 weeks waiting for some resolution to unwrapping bHBD to HBD.
Attend to the basics and treat your stakeholders properly.
Yikes, if that's the case that's a more severe problem than I was aware of.
This is a perfect illustration of why you need to grow at a reasonable rate - if you're doing so much that you can't address time-sensitive issues, you've failed.
crypto is the wild west arena
Let's try to avoid funding robber barons this time. Wild West or not.
Assassin's Creed Shadows 😀
I really only played the first two and I loved them. I tried Valhalla and it was just not for me.
Good read! And it is important that everyone on Hive stay critical and follow what they thing is right after doing own research and following Logic. Many users are just brainwashed and blindly follow and promote without understanding the facts.
Yep. Which is how we ended up funding a freaking racing car but that's a whole different topic.
We need Tools on Hive that a web2 user and businesses could use without even knowing it's on Hive.
You've touched on a lot of things I feel passionately about here, and I agree with just about all of it. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather see one thing worked on at a time, and done properly before moving on with the next.
There's also a big issue of over-complexity, and I believe Leo is falling into that trap. Not everyone who uses Hive is a crypto or technical expert. I know I'm not - I'm just here to write stuff and maybe make a little on the side !
LeoDex is a prime example of what can go wrong with this. When it operated like a reskin of Tribaldex with a few extra features, it was brilliant and I loved it. Then it turned into something with alien terminology and complex operations that assumed you knew what you were doing. That's going to drive away all except the most committed. Most users want an intuitive, simple experience where they can easily understand what's going on.
But that brings me to the final point. Leo raises funding in all kinds of ways; monthly subscriptions, fees for LeoDex transactions, even inbound delegations. I get that developers cost money, but I would prefer to see any funding requested through proposals delivered as a loan, with a business plan that includes a timescale for repayment and ways to objectively measure success. The DHF should give grants (rather than loans) only for genuine marketing with a measurable ROI, and for delivery of core infrastructure improvements. Otherwise, it's just draining market cap from the ecosystem into a few pockets.
But hat's just my opinion ! I really want Leo to succeed, but I think it needs a bit better planning.
Exactly dude. I'm not saying I want them to fail at all, I just want to see responsible growth and have any shred of assurance that there is in fact a benefit to HIVE in all this.
Users for the sake of users doesn't actually help us, and I don't know why folks think it does? If 9/10 have no desire to ever use it for anything but to extract into their native coin... all it provides is noise and cashflow into specifically Leo.
When HIVE succeeds everyone succeeds. When a L2 token succeeds, they succeed. It doesn't feed back into HIVE.
So I want them to succeed, but I don't want it to be at the cost of HIVE itself.
This is a well-written and insightful critique of the Leo team's ambitious plans and past performance.I appreciate your detailed analysis of their roadmap and your thoughtful examination of their past missteps.You've raised some valid concerns about overpromising and the potential for underdelivering, especially when it comes to funding requests.I think it's important to hold projects accountable,and your post serves as a valuable reminder to be critical of hype and to consider past performance when evaluating future promises.I'm interested to see how the Leo team responds to your critique and how their projects evolve in the future.
Thank you!
You are very much welcome!
You have changed my perception.
Good write up
Thank you for reading!
ahhhhh.. Dont believe the hype! right on, i no longer go for 1% chances of hitting the jackpot, instead i like to slowly, but surely add to the stack. 😉😎👊
Many thanks for writing this post. Community need to know this. It is insane that khal has the audacity to ask for funding from the hive DHF not once but twice!!
Thank you for reading it!
Finally someone give exact numbers. Numerology never lie. I've got same feeling. I always wondered why DHF is usually going to a projects that don't provide shit. Few times I did some research about it as well, I just went through the list and checked their socials, websites and what did they provided etc and basically when they started to receive funds. What I seen there, shocked me, 80% of them is a piggy bank.
I also think that multi-chain and milking out HBD and Hive from blockchain is a non-sense, why not use Layer-1 coins plus Swap.Hive only for your project? Why you need another token for that? What's the point? I thought that idea is to bring users from outside to use and hold Hive and/or HBD? Nah? That doesn't make sense at all...
I believe based on snippets I've heard from Khal, that his belief is that we need users more than we need anything else. I'm putting words in his mouth so take this with a grain of salt... but it seems like he thinks that until we hit some arbitrary threshold of active users, we won't be able to attract ""the masses"" to HIVE.
I'm not sure that he's correct on that. I don't think user counts is necessarily the be-all-end-all. It might be that Leo needs a flood of users, but if so then it's because they might pay for premium (which doesn't necessarily cost them Hive or HBD anymore), and because it looks like the team is again going to be experimenting with ads.
So, a flood of users is good for Leo, indisputably. But is it good for Hive if none of them intend to ever hold Hive or interact beyond dust votes?
I have not even mentioned about premium 😇🤣 that's another topic but let's not go deep there 😎
Flood of users, good for ads, profit for them and anything Leo do there and it's not in benefit for Hive at all. Just my opinion here.
Exactly. Fully agree.
The $10 premium ship though was the firat mishap., though it was implemented for the growth of inleo but the site just does not get better, so why fund a project over empty promises
Premium is actually one thing I don't have a strong opinion on - it's a reasonable addition to the site and helps them fund. It could have more robust features but additional votes (when they work) + a few quality of life things and the potential for Subscriber Only posts is okay.
I'm not entirely sure how they pull off Sub Only posts, which is something I've idly wondered at a few times, but yeah... that at least is an individual user choice and I don't feel like it's predatory by nature. The site is still perfectly useable without it, so I think it's a fair addition all in all.
The criticism is fair though, for a lot of folks it's probably not worth it. Thanks for the comment!
Exactly it will be worth it if value is being put first rather than money. Ohh and you most welcome 😊😊
Thanks for sharing! - @azircon
Congratulations @oblivioncubed! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 54000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPGood read!
A lot of the information you share, I didn't know. Some of those projects were already running when I arrived at Hive, but I had heard about them. I think it's important for the community to know this so that everyone can judge and make informed decisions. I still haven't voted on the proposal; I mainly believe it's misdirected. I don't think new features are the key to attracting more people; rather, we should focus on retaining existing users. That's a challenge in itself!
Thanks for reading. I think there's a balance to be had for new features and retention - I think some of what the Leo team has done is absolutely a net benefit to the chain. I don't know that hundreds of thousands of dollars to onboard folks who are just going to cash out into their native coin of choice is a smart move though. I just don't see a return on that. Particularly when what they most interact with is InLeo. It feels like a very one-sided deal where we take on all the risk and they reap all rewards.
Trade TVST on beeswap
"Overpromise and Underdeliver" I think that is the problem with the entire crypto space and consequently HIVE also suffers from the same. But I'm a HIVE maximalist and I still believe.
Very interesting, you got great points. What's your take on VSC, Please make a post about that project.
This is a good resume. God, CUB, that one I remember vividly.